Google Adwords

I am new to Google Adwords and figuring it out very slowly - its an age thing.......

I have set up an initial campaign with about 25 key words very specifically targeted around car hire at Inverness Airport with 6 potential ads. After reading some of the forum posts here I have disabled both mobile devices and content network. I have set my budget per day quite low to start with at £5 and automatic bidding however so far it has not cost more than £1 per day. Now I know that sounds positive but despite the fact it says the campaign is running and, so far today reports one of my ads was displayed 92 times, I can't see my ad being displayed whenever I look - using the Opportunities Ad Preview tool as recommended by Google.

Had no return on investment so far - only one enquiry out of three hits yesterday was from a French company running golf vacations looking for a link to their site!

How many click thru's did you receive for those 92 impressions? Was that the 3 hits you spoke of? If so, you're probably not far off of the norm where Click Thru Rate is concerned. Not that you should settle for the norm, mind you. The norm sucks because most PPC ad buyers don't really know what they're doing and are lucky to break even.

Also how well do your Adwords ads speak to the search terms you're targeting? Especially the title of your ads?

As you might suspect, writing ads that pull clicks is something of an art form. The closer you can get your ads to addressing the need evidenced by the search terms you're targeting, the higher your CTR or click thru rate. Believe or not this is quite important because if you obtain a high CTR you can actually end up getting more ad displays for less money, and get your ad to display in a higher position than would be the norm for your ad bid cost. On the ad placement question as a very, very general rule I've always found it best to make sure my PPC ads appear in the top 2 or 3 spots on the page. Any lower and it seems to adversely affect CTR, thus causing me to have to pay a bit more to drive my ad up the page so that it gets noticed. Though if the ad itself is well targeted I can back off on the bid amount once I've established a good CTR over a few weeks.

Just as importantly if not more so, you'll also want to make sure your landing page speaks to those same issue your ads do, and provides a solution to the problem. This will drive higher your conversion rates be for the clicks received, thus making your PPC campaign successful.

It's not a subject that can be satisfactorily covered in a short post in my experience. Heck, people have written entire books about writing PPC ads that pull clicks and obtain decent CTR so you get good ad positioning without breaking the bank. Others have written entire books about creating PPC landing pages that convert visitors into buyers.

How many click thru's did you receive for those 92 impressions? Was that the 3 hits you spoke of? If so, you're probably not far off of the norm where Click Thru Rate is concerned. Not that you should settle for the norm, mind you. The norm sucks because most PPC ad buyers don't really know what they're doing and are lucky to break even.

Also how well do your Adwords ads speak to the search terms you're targeting? Especially the title of your ads?

Top keywords are Car Hire Inverness and for 870 impressions we got 14 clicks which is a 1.61% success but for Car Rental Inverness there were only 287 impressions and 6 clicks which is a 2.09% success rate. Average position is 5.9 for both and they both have a quality score of 7/10. I am running a series of ad's but Google seems to be favouring one over all the others and it has the Keyword tag in the title so mostly it will show the search term as the title line.

So far this has cost £11 so not a fortune and I will be monitoring it very closely to ensure it doesn't cost more than we make. From what you were saying Randy you wouldn't go for the automatic bidding option at the beginning of a campaign? The cost per click seems to vary between 20 pence and 60 pence depending on the time of day. Would you suggest putting in a high bid to get a higher position?

You can certainly test auto bidding Margaret. But the more control you hand over to such automated processes the more closely you need to watch all of the moving parts to make sure you don't end up with a campaign that costs you more than it's bringing in.

I test a load of different things with my PPC campaigns. Some work, some don't. And there's not a blanket type of rule I could give you to say This Will Absolutely Work or This Doesn't Work. It often depends upon the market segment and the implementation.

You can certainly give it a try. Just be sure you carve out some time to keep an eye on things so you don't end up racking up a huge bill with not enough income to justify the expense.

You're advertising a car hire service near an Airport, Why disable mobile advertising? Coming off the plane in Orlando earlier this month, the mobile is the first place I looked for ground transportation. If you dial in on your target market close enough mobile may bring you relevant buyers, just setup a separate campaign so you'll know for sure.

Next compare the results you're getting on Google Adwords with other marketing channels. You may not be doing anything wrong, it may be that you have a higher cost per sale than you expect. There could be issues with your landing page, or those visitors may not be buyers, or your sample is too small.

Best,

Justin

P. s. Never mention your keyword phrases here or anywhere else, that's a sure-fire way to increase your costs. Just say, "keyword phrase A had 870 impressions, got 14 clicks, where phrase B had 287 impressions with 6 clicks" -- don't want to introduce more competitors when you later post about something working for you.